Desert sunflowers begin the annual desert bloom at sunrise near Amboy Crater National Natural Landmark as a near-normal rain season follows a near-record dry season that lead to a wave of massive wildfires across southern California in 2007, on February 29, 2008 near Amboy, California. Weather experts are saying that it would take years of above-normal rainfall to refill the shrinking reservoirs of the West and to recover from a drought that has plagued western states since the end of the 1990s. Very few wildflowers were seen in California deserts in 2007. Amboy Crater is a symmetrically-shaped cinder cone near Mojave National Preserve in one of the youngest volcanic fields in the nation. The last eruption period occurred 500 years ago.
David McNew/Getty Images

Serena Williams won her first U.S. Open at age 17. Last weekend, she won her 17th at the same site at age 31, earning $3.6 million and becoming the first woman to surpass $9 million in a season. But that's not what excites her.

"I honestly love to play," Williams said. "When I grew up playing tennis in Compton I just never thought about any of this...I think my dad got me into tennis because of the money, but me being naive and silly, I never thought about it. I just thought, `I want to win.'"

Locally grown food is about to get local-er. You may soon be able to grow fruits and vegetable outside home on city property.

The Los Angeles Department of Public Works is in the process of assembling a new list of plants that are acceptable to grow on public parkways—those rectangles of land sandwiched between streets and sidewalks.